Jeffries Calls Stop-and-Frisk Settlement a "Step Forward"

Last July, Governor Paterson signed into law a bill that did away with the NYPD's stop-and-frisk database.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and State Senator Eric Adams, made it illegal for police officers to add the names and addresses of every person they stop, question and frisk to an electronic database used in criminal investigations.

Nearly 90 percent of the people in that database are innocent of any crime, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

However, the legislation does not prohibit the practice of Stop and Frisk altogether. But, all of that may soon change.

On Friday, the city settled in a federal class-action lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and the Legal Aid Society on behalf of nine people who claimed they were illegally stopped and frisked by police at city housing projects.